love in all lands (mingled with grief)
by TolkienGirl
Summary: "Always worrying," Boromir says, and then he laughs. That sound is more than ringing trumpets, more than banners in the breeze, more than the running of fresh water. [Faramir and Boromir and fate.]


Summer is half-spent, and the sun is hot. If Faramir was alone, he would readily choose the dusky cool of the archives room over a mad gallop across the Fields of Pelennor. A mad gallop, followed by two or three hours of exploring, no less.

But Faramir is not alone.

The guards, Boromir ordered to stay with the horses. Now the two sons of the Steward scramble over banks and gnarled tree roots and moss-shagged stones on their own.

At the mouth of an inlet, Boromir pauses, frowning. "I had though there would be better fish here," he says, kicking impatiently at the stones. His boots are black beneath the water.

Faramir does not point out that kicking at stones will frighten any fish away. He can see, as well as his brother can, that only a few snails and lithe, sandy-colored frogs are trapped amid the flattened rushes.

Still, there is beauty here. The sun is on the water and the high reeds rattle in the wind. Faramir breathes deeply: so much of this, so much of the lands around Osgiliath, was meant for light and happiness and kings.

"If it's fish you want," he suggests, "We can find another river?"

Boromir's brows lift, both at once. Faramir can raise one, like their father can, but since their father hates to see any expression of defiance (any expression of his own) on his younger son's face, Faramir refrains.

Boromir scoffs, "You call this a river? After you've seen the Anduin?"

Faramir flushes. Not because his brother is being harsh—he isn't, there is affection beneath the words—but because he always strives for precision. In his letters, in his music, in his swordplay. Mithrandir once told him he was as serious as a blue wizard. Faramir does not know what this means, but it haunts him.

He looks back down at the water. The silver body of a trout flashes past at last, quick and gone. The current sings with a thousand bubbling voices.

_Yes_, he thinks. _I call it a river._

All rivers look the same to Faramir.

* * *

"Cursed things," Boromir growls, twisting his knife carefully into the grooved leather covering his shield. Orc arrowheads are buried there, nasty points and splinters of chipped metal and bone. "They are the devil to get out, and I dare not trust it to even the best of my men."

Faramir knows all this; knows that Boromir tends to all his own weaponry with a deft hand. He knows, too, that Boromir is talking to himself, cheerfully gruff, because the skirmish went well with them. No men lost; only seven wounded. There were twenty of them, all told, and they demolished twice their number in orcs.

Not Mordor's best.

Faramir turns his ivory-stemmed pipe over and over in his hands. "Better the shield," he offers in response, "Than you."

Boromir looks up at him sharply. His gray eyes are like their father's—deep-set and keen. Only Boromir's are not ruthless and Faramir does not grow cold beneath their gaze. "Always worrying," Boromir says, and then he laughs. That sound is more than ringing trumpets, more than banners in the breeze, more than the running of fresh water. "How many arrows, little brother," Boromir asks, "Do you think it would take? More than those puny archers had to offer."

(Three. It takes three.)

* * *

On the last night before the campaign to retake Osgiliath begins, they fall asleep together in the guardhouse, still poring over maps. Faramir starts awake at the sound of his brother's voice. When he rubs away the blur in his eyes, he sees Boromir with a hand over his mouth.

"What is it?" Faramir asks. "Are you ill?"

"I dreamed," Boromir says slowly, his voice still rasped and confused by sleep, "Of Isildur's bane. I dreamed of Gondor falling, and the fault mine."

Faramir puts a hand on his brother's shoulder. Faramir aches beneath his stiff-collared livery. Faramir says, "These are heavy times. We all feel the weight of the East." Faramir does not say,

_I dream, too. I dream of you, dead._

* * *

_Boromir. A river. Any river. Boots black beneath the water, and a scarred shield. _

* * *

"You don't have to be afraid of him," Boromir said once. He was perhaps twelve, then, which leaves Faramir at seven—a child still crying at night and begging for comfort. Was it this weakness that turned their father's face from him? Or was it the very way in which he entered the world, weakening his princess-mother, until she laughed and sang no more?

Perhaps it is both.

And this is the root of Faramir's heart and the nature of his fear: none of it is for his father. He is not afraid of his father.

He is afraid of himself, and the future.

* * *

If Osgiliath is snatched from the jaws of a beast, then the beast all but severs the hand that took it. They have lost many lives—many bold, brave lives. Boromir's cheering speech, of course, does not forget that. It is only that he leads as he has always led: with the sun on his face and his feet planted firmly in a river of blood.

Only when their father comes, only when their father praises and coddles what should only be honored, does Boromir's face fall.

_Do not defend me_, Faramir nearly begs him. _Do not waste your breath—nay, do not waste your heart_.

Too late. And Boromir is going to Rivendell, in pursuit of a dark and perilous dream. All their hearts are spent.

* * *

_That I had died—instead of Boromir—_

_Yes, I wish that_.

So does Faramir.

Once this fair city was white like a lifted lily; now it is only the white of bleached bones. Once these halls rang with hope and gladness; with the promise of a line passed down. Faramir was a seer before his time, then: a boy who feared the future and a man who questioned the past. He was not the only heart that beat in Gondor.

But what is lacking, in these sunset years? What was lost, with his brother in the river? How many men did the House of Ecthelion need to survive?

(Three. They needed three.)


End file.
